Welcome back to the World of Astrom blog! Here I’m continuing my Races of Astrom series with a sequence of posts about the different Mortal people groups in Astrom. This follows on from previous posts about the elves, dwarves and armists.
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After the recent introduction to the Mortals in Astrom generally, and these portraits of the Mortals of Aranar, the Mortals of Ciricien, the Mortals of Hendar, the Mortals of Lurallan and the Mortals of Dorzand, this is the sixth in a series of posts looking at each race of Mortals in turn. Still to come are the Mortals of Urunmar, Firwood & Swordhilt Peninsula.
Northmen was a collective term applied by the folk of Hendar and Ciricen to any Mortals dwelling in Urunmar. At various times over the course of its history, Urunmar was also populated by orcs, goblins, trolls and other creatures not counted among the Free Peoples, but Northmen dwelt among them, the most isolated and northerly of all the Mortal peoples of Astrom.
Urunmar is so far north and so inhospitable that for millennia no permanent settlements were made there. Legend has it that small communities of Snow-elves made there way there, either overland through the great isthmus that connected Urunmar to the rest of Astrom, or aboard Marintor ships, but they were quickly forgotten by the rest of Elvendom. At the start of the Third Chapter, Urunmar remained largely a deserted land.
Things changed when Kurundar the sorcerer took up his abode at Oron Barazand, where the second Pool of High Magic had at last been discovered. Biding his time, Kurundar did not at first make war upon the Mortals of Hendar or Ciricen, but instead came to them offering aid when a catastrophic plague swept through those nations in the fifth century. Using magic to heal many and win for himself a great following, Kurundar offered a new home to the people of northern Hendar. Thousands accepted his offer, especially the men of Nalator, who had been hit hardest by the plague, but also the men of Malator, who opposed the reunification of Hendar under King Riano.
A great migration made the hazardous journey through the Haunted Pass into Urunmar, but while they found respite from plague there, they also found a hard and unforgiving land, wreathed in clouds, ice and fire. Unable to turn back, and caught in their new allegiance, these newcomers settled and became the Northmen. For the next three thousand years they multiplied and eked out a precarious existence. Doomed to be the vassals of Kurundar, they paid heavy tribute to him, fought in his armies and endured the depredations of the orcs and trolls who stalked their land. They forsook Prélan and worshipped their own pantheon of gods, whom they celebrated in epic tales. Marching under the black banners of Kurundar or harrying the coasts of Astrom in vast fleets of black-sailed longships, they were feared and despised by the other Mortals of Astrom, a race apart.
In the fullness of time there came to be other Mortals in Urunmar – prisoners-of-war taken from the southern nations to labour in vast slave camps for their Sorcerer-King – but of the Northmen there were three kinds: a tribe in the west who settled around the bleak waters of Axe Bay; a tribe in the east who founded numerous port-cities amid the deep fjords of the Troizon coast; and a third tribe who wandered into the mysterious icy world of the far north. Unless driven by great need or unfortunate enough to be sentenced to harsh penal colonies, the Mortals of Urunmar seldom set foot within the ring of Urunmar’s mountains beyond Sorcerer’s Pass, and never established any permanent settlements there.
The western tribe became known as the Baratai, after the elvish word for cold, the eastern tribe became known as the Ensabahai, which in elvish denotes ‘pirates of the north’, and the northern tribe were called Shieynara, the ice-folk. Such scholarly distinctions, however, were lost on the ordinary folk of the Free Peoples, who called them all Northmen and loathed them equally.
The Baratai
The western tribe of the Baratai settled in the lands west of the great ring of mountains that surrounds the central plateau of Urunmar. They had homes on the misty plateau of Baraszand and all around the southwestern shores, but their greatest settlement was Mourdel, where the River Mourphir runs into Axe Bay. The name meant ‘City of Death’ in elvish, an ill omen at first, but later a badge of honour for the hardy men and women who dwelt there. The Warlord of Mourdel was their chieftain. Though denied the title of king by a jealous Kurundar, the Warlord ruled the western Northmen, maintaining as much autonomy as was possible when Kurundar’s sorcerous lieutenants and orc patrols scoured the land and collected tribute.
What little viable farmland there was in this region lay along the banks of the Mourphir, but the Baratai also hunted elk and caribou across the plains and in the forests lining the shores of Axe Bay, and fished the western seas, which positively teemed with fish of all kinds. Mourdel was a city of stone, but most of their dwellings were of wood and wattle, built low and long to escape the biting winds coming off the Rétorn Ocean and roofed with turf. They were great hunters and sailors. Their craftsmen were skilled in carving bone and horn, and also in fashioning weapons and armour, for they mined rich seams of iron beneath the mountains and sent it down the river to Mourdel.
When Kurundar sent them forth to war, their fleets ravaged the western coasts of Hendar and Ithrill, bearing bloody axes on their black sails, and they were a terrifying menace all down the western seaboard of Astrom until the navies of Hendar, Ithrill and Maristonia gained the upper hand. They also served as foot soldiers in the First and Second Wars of Kurundar, boasting the best heavy infantry, the best weapons and the best armour of any of the Northmen. In times of peace, between Kurundar’s first overthrow and his later return, they traded with Hendar, bringing ships laden with iron ingots, furs, pelts, amber, antlers and whale-oil.
The Ensabahai
The Ensabahai dwelt on Urunmar’s eastern coast, which was wild, mountainous and deeply riven by cold fjords and long, cliff-bound peninsulas. They dwelt beyond the slave cities of Amdasin and Tánmor, occupying the narrow strip of land between the ocean and the inner ring of mountains. There was insufficient territory here for a wide, land-based civilisation like that of the Baratai, so the Ensabahai became a maritime people, clinging to the coasts and dependent on the ocean. There was hunting to be had in the forests that lay thick between each valley, but for the most part their resources came from the sea.
The Ensabahai had six city-states, all situated at the head of one of the long fjords and each further north than the last. Southernmost and most populous was Nerazen, which had the greatest strength but also lay closest to Kurundar’s seat of power at Oron Barazand (later renamed Oron Cavardul). Next came Kilosvon, Endeme (or Endaheim), Cavarin, Rontomord and Shieyuron in turn, dotting the eastern coast like beads on a frozen necklace. Each city was ruled by a piratical Warlord, though they all paid reluctant homage to Kurundar. The further north you went, the harsher the climate became, and the cities became smaller and weaker. When war-fleets were sent south to plunder and burn along the coasts of Ciricen and Kalimar, Nerazen and Kilosvon contributed the most ships, but when all six cities banded together they became a formidable armada, and it took the combined might of Ciricen, Kalimar and Maristonia to break their power.
All the Ensabahai were bold mariners, faring far over the northern seas. The pirates of Nerazen and Kilosvon were fearsome fighters with the biggest vessels, bristling with ship-borne artillery, but the pirates of the northern cities like Rontomord and Shieyuron were even more savage, making up for numbers with mad courage and sheer ferocity. Their captains dressed in the white furs of ice-bears and their ships were pale too, white strakes and white sails, emerging out of misty sea like ghosts to visit nightmares upon enemy coasts.
The Shieynara
The northern third of Urunmar was extremely inhospitable, a barren wilderness of rock and ice. Rolling tundra north of the River Mourphir gave way to regions of permafrost, where giant glaciers flowed down to the sea and lakes and rivers were frozen for most of the year. In the east, the port of Shieyuron on Auliron Fjord was ice-bound for two-thirds of the year, while the bays further north were rarely free of ice and supported no permanent settlements. The northern tip of Urunmar lay under a deep ice-sheet all-year round, a lifeless plain called Endoruen, the Northern Wastes.
The brave souls who wandered north after Urunmar was settled learned how to adapt to all of these regions except Endoruen, where no people at all lived. They grazed herds of musk oxen on the tundra and took advantage of the brief, cool summers on the coastal plains. They used wolf-drawn sleds and skates to cross frozen lakes and learnt the secrets of finding food and water even in the depths of winter. In summer they migrated across the tundra in shifting encampments, and in winter they sought shelter in mountain caves and tunnel-warrens dug deep beneath the snows. These were elusive people, seal-hunters and trappers adept at camouflage and concealment. They were few in number, treading lightly in a land haunted by ice-bears, thick-furred rhinos and woolly mammoths.
Except for seasonal trade fairs on the banks of the Mourphir or summertime visits to the ports of Shieyuron and Rontomord, they rarely interacted with the other Northmen tribes. They did not go to sea and were too few to make up a significant part of Kurundar’s Northmen armies. Those that did go south to fight in the Second War of Kurundar served as elite alpine troops during winter campaigns, but most were too elusive even for Kurundar to track down and bend to his will.
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